The other autobiography I was reading

The Autobiography and Other Writings, Benjamin Franklin
   Kenneth Silverman, ed.

Having emerg'd from the Poverty & Obscurity in which I was born & bred, to a State of Affluence & some Degree of Reputation in the World, and having gone so far thro' Life with a considerable Share of Felicity, the conducing Means I made use of, which, with the Blessing of God, so well succeeded, my Posterity may like to know, as they may find some of them suitable to their own Situations, & therefore fit to be imitated.

I might have bought this book after visiting Benjamin Franklin's house and printing shop in Philadelphia, back in 2000.  It is an amazing historic site, which I'd love to visit again someday.  I know it inspired me to buy a biography of him, which I never read.  Or I might have bought this several years later, when the Museum of Natural Science here in Houston hosted a really cool exhibit on him. Jill Lepore's book on his sister Jane Franklin Mecom, Book of Ages, which is almost a dual biography of the sister and brother, reminded me that I had this still to read.  But it was really my plan to read the books that have been longest on my TBR shelves that finally led me to pick this up.  Once I started, I found it and its author so fascinating that I am making lists for further reading.  I even put off reading the Laura Ingalls Wilder autobiography that finally arrived!

Benjamin Franklin had such an amazing life.  I knew the outline of it already.  He was born in Boston in 1706, the youngest son of seventeen children.  He had only a year of formal schooling but managed to educate himself, in large part by borrowing books, which he studied at night.  Apprenticed to an older brother as a printer, he learned not just to compose type but also words and arguments.  He ran away at seventeen to Philadelphia, where he found work as a printer, eventually opening his own shop and starting a newspaper.  His business did so well that he could retire in his early 40s, to focus on scientific experiments, reading and writing.  His scientific work brought him international acclaim, honorary doctorates and court honors.  He was instrumental in founding the first library, hospital, fire company, militia, and university in Philadelphia, which was becoming the most important city in the colonies.  Franklin also was appointed or elected to a variety of public offices.  This led to a post as Pennsylvania's agent in Britain, where he also represented three other colonies.  Fiercely loyal to the British Crown, his conversion to the cause of independence made him a key figure in the struggle.  When he was named "minister plenipotentiary" to France, he became the darling of French society, with his face appearing on all kinds of china.  He helped frame the Declaration of Independence, and his was the closing speech at the Constitutional Convention.  There is simply no one else like him in the whole of American history.

Franklin began his autobiography in 1771, writing it for his son William.  He was later angered and grieved by his son's decision to remain loyal to Britain in the war for independence, which left them estranged for the rest of his life.  The final two sections of the autobiography are more impersonal but just as interesting.  It is not a full account of his life, however.  It breaks off in 1757, when Franklin was in London representing the Pennsylvania assembly in a dispute with its "proprietaries," the descendants of its founder William Penn.

As I said elsewhere, reading this book felt like opening a door and stepping into 18th-century America, traveling with Franklin from Boston through New York to Pennsylvania, and eventually to England.  I found his style very readable, once I got used to the Capital Letters that always Look so Strange at first in documents from that time.  Franklin had a great story to tell, full of ups and downs, successes and even a few failures.  As the editor points out, it is a carefully curated story, but isn't that true of most autobiographies? And clearly it only skims the surface of a very complicated and sophisticated man, but again, that isn't uncommon in autobiography, and even biography.

The Penguin edition that I read includes a brief miscellaneous collection of short pieces and excerpts from his letters.  Of course it features a selection from his famous "Poor Richard" almanacs.  In introducing this section, the editor writes that they "are included here to show aspects of his character and career that the Autobiography muffles or ignores."  The Autobiography does not mention for example that Franklin owned slaves, but later in life he became an abolitionist. I wasn't surprised to find a document he signed as president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery.  He probably ended up the president of every group he joined.

I will be looking for a biography of Benjamin Franklin on my next trip to the library, and recommendations would be very welcome. (I wish I could remember which one I bought and abandoned.)  It's a little daunting to see that the published Papers of Benjamin Franklin have now reached 40 volumes.  Reading this book has also reminded me how much I have forgotten about early American history.  I have the letters of Abigail and John Adams already on the TBR shelves, which may help fill in some gaps.

Jane Franklin's "Book of Ages"

Book of Ages, The Life and Opinions of Jane Franklin, Jill Lepore

Dr. Jill Lepore is a professor of American history at Harvard and a staff writer at The New Yorker, which is where I first came across her work.  Her articles and reviews often focus on some aspect of American history, though in this week's issue she writes about Doctor Who.  They are always interesting and informative, and occasionally a bit snarky.  I knew that she was working on a book about Jane Franklin Mecom, Benjamin Franklin's sister.  I was already planning on reading it when I read an article in The New Yorker about the project, a personal essay linking her research and her own family history.  This moved the book to the top of my waiting list.  I picked up my copy on Monday evening, and for the past week I have been immersed in Jane Franklin's world and in this wonderful book.  I am glad it has already been nominated for a National Book Award.  I expect to see it on many more prize lists.

Benjamin Franklin was the youngest son and Jane the youngest daughter of their father's seventeen children from two marriages (their mother bore ten of them).  He was born in 1706, she in 1712.  They grew up in a small crowded house in Boston, which also served as their father's chandler shop.  Benjamin famously ran away at seventeen, to Philadelphia, where he set up a printing shop.  By writing, printing, and scientific experiment, he became the most prominent intellectual, the most famous man, in the American colonies.  He was drawn into politics, serving in London as the representative for four colonial governments, before returning to take his part in the struggle for independence.  Jane on the other hand remained in the family home, caring for her parents, marrying, starting a family of her own.  She bore twelve children in twenty-four years; only two survived her.  Though she could read, she wrote with difficulty, at least at first.  But she read everything she could get her hands on.  Despite their very separate lives and their rare visits, she and her brother remained close, exchanging letters and books through the years.  Eventually, they were the only two siblings left, which drew them even closer.  Yet he never mentioned her in his famous Autobiography, nor did he save her letters.  She saved all of his, and she collected every piece of his writing that she could find.  She also wrote an autobiography, of sorts: a small hand-sewn book she titled her "Book of Ages," where she noted the major events in her family's life, the births and (all too frequently) the deaths.

Jill Lepore argues that despite the silence about Jane Franklin in the published Autobiography, "little of what Benjamin Franklin wrote . . . can be understood without her."  So to study Jane's life is to explore his as well, which gives "a wholly new reading of the life and opinions of her brother."  This is really a double biography, of the sister and brother.  Franklin has been studied exhaustively.  The collected edition of his papers has reached thirty-nine volumes, with more to come, and many biographies have been written.  His sister Jane has been the subject of only one previous biography, in the 1950s, as well as a edition of the letters exchanged with her brother.

This is more than just biography, though, it is also social history at its best.  Dr. Lepore uses the siblings' lives, especially Jane's, as a base from which to explore many aspects of life in colonial America, particularly for women.  It is fascinating reading.  Among the topics she considers are education and literacy, religious practice, employment, housework, childbirth, funeral customs, and the conventions of letter writing.  I did not know or had forgotten that in the New England colonies, children were taught to read but only boys learned to write; girls and women were never expected to do more than sign their names.  This wide-ranging exploration of Jane Franklin's world reminded me of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich's excellent A Midwife's Tale, which uses the diary Martha Ballard kept in a small Maine town in the late 1700s to the same effect. 

Like Laurel Ulrich, Dr. Lepore does not lose sight of the people at the center of her story, Jane Mecom and Benjamin Franklin.  I think she does an excellent job of bringing Jane especially to life, of making her real to us.  That to my mind is the ultimate test of biography.  It should convey, in the words of historian Paul Murray Kendall, "the warmth of a life being lived."

Initially Jane Franklin Mecom's world was bounded by the care of parents and children, not to mention a feckless husband always in debt.  Many of her children died young, from consumption, and she raised grandchildren and even great-grandchildren.  At least two of her sons had mental problems.  It was heart-breaking to read of one, confined for years in a barn in the country; there was no place else to send him, no one who could care for him.  But gradually Jane became more aware of and interested in politics, and this book then also becomes an overview of the colonial struggles with Britain over taxation, the clashes that led to war for independence, and the uneasy first years of the American republic.  Living in Boston, Jane of course saw much of this first-hand, and she also had a unique perspective through her famous brother.  She was living with him in Philadelphia in 1775 and 1776, and she was there for the signing of the Declaration of Independence.

All of this would be riches enough.  But Dr. Lepore does something else with this work: in writing about an ordinary person, and a woman at that, she wrote "a meditation on silence in the archives."  History is no longer just the stories of the great men, but history is dependent on sources, on what is saved and preserved.  Benjamin Franklin did not keep his sister's letters.  Neither did Jane Austen's brothers keep hers, and then her sister Cassandra mutilated what little was left.  What we know about the past, about the lives of people like ourselves, depends on records: letters, diaries, account books, inventories, wills, church registers, Books of Ages.  Dr. Lepore pieces together the fragments of Jane Franklin Mecom's life that have survived, and she uses "this most ordinary of lives to offer a history of history and to explain how history is written: from what remains of the lives of the great, the bad, and, not as often, the good."  If you think that sounds dry, please take my word for it, it's most assuredly not.